Varadkar set for a red-letter day

If the Taoiseach still checks his own post, he may do so with a slight sense of trepidation this morning.

Leo Varadkar will soon be receiving a letter from Sinn Fein deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald. Strongly worded, no doubt, after he described her as “very cranky today” in the Dail yesterday.

Relations between the pair have never been light and breezy, but a distinctly autumnal chill has descended in this season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.

He objected to her use of prepared scripts - sarcastically praising her “flawless delivery” - and then to her unscripted heckling, or “interrupting”.

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Having denounced the Fine Gael leader as “facile and dismissive”, Ms McDonald crossed the floor of the chamber and confronted Mr Varadkar.

Sharp ears in the vicinity overheard the Sinn Fein TD telling the Taoiseach she would “write to him”, as Ministers Heather Humphreys and Joe McHugh looked on, stony-faced.

“Very unusual behaviour”, was acting chair Alan Farrell’s description of the confrontation, which followed Mr Varadkar’s comparison on Tuesday of Ms McDonald to the leader of the French National Front, Marine le Pen.

Miriam Lord’s Dail sketch portrays Mr Varadkar behaving “like he was at a university debate”.

Meanwhile, Harry McGee’s background piece has an unnamed Sinn Fein source speaking darkly about “low-brow misogyny” (is there a high-brow kind?) in Fine Gael’s approach to the party, North and South.

What were Mr Varadkar and Ms McDonald actually debating? The bailed-out banks and their tax arrangements initially, and then Northern Ireland, as it happens.

Balancing the books for a boring budget

If our readers were to swig from their hip flasks every time the phrase “balancing the books” is used over the next 12 days they would surely be in a merry state by the time the budget is announced.

Even at the height of his ill-tempered spat with Ms McDonald in the Dail chamber yesterday, Mr Varadkar managed to repeat yet again that the Government would “balance the books” in next month’s budget.

It’s a phrase we’ll all be royally sick of by budget day on October 10th.

The sensible-sounding sound bite is presumably designed to indicate Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe will not attempt any showy high-wire acts on his first outing.

So will it be a boring budget? “God, I hope so,” says one political insider.